A matter of trust

"As interfering help is given, ability and self-confidence are taken away."

This quote, from Wu Wei's book I Ching Wisdom: More Guidance from the Book of Answers, is how we start day two of our Level 1 organisational coaching certification.

We spend day one teaching our participants that, in the role of coach, it's necessary to stop giving advice, providing answers, and leading people to a pre-considered solution. If you're a leader, from a performance perspective, allowing the smart people you've hired to have the space and time to learn to come up with their own solutions, applying their strengths, knowledge, and experience to build something innovative and sustainable rather than copying and pasting your (so-called) wisdom onto them is a no-brainer.

Cognitively, we get it. Makes perfect sense. Why would I want to take away anyone's ability and self-confidence? We need employees with more ability and self-confidence!

As a practitioner and coach trainer, I find the tricky bit around this concept of 'interfering help'. As coaches, whether internal, external, or leaders who coach, we are caught in habitual traps that prevent us from identifying when our help is interfering rather than helpful.

The first trap is that we coach because we want to help people. Next year, I will have been coaching for 20 years and training coaches for 15, and in both roles, the common theme is that people want to coach to help others. This is a noble and compassionate stance - sort of.

The shadow side of wanting to help others, is that you need those others to be helpless. If your value, satisfaction, and your own self-confidence in the role of coach comes from helping others, you are most likely - at some level - needing them to need your help. The paradox of this, of course, is that we get repeat business, and positive feedback when we help people. As my supervisor says, coaching is full of paradoxes.

The second trap is our very human addiction to problem-solving and productivity. Ticking tasks off to-do lists and moving things forward. Again, super necessary to succeed at work, AND the shadow side of this is that our minds have been so trained and conditioned to problem solve that we jump into that when faced with a problem, even if the problem doesn't belong to us, and even if it would benefit our coaching counterparts to learn to solve the problem themselves. This second trap is particularly strong for leaders and internal coaches, who are responsible for delivering results in the same systems they coach within.

Both of these traps make it difficult to evaluate whether our "help" in coaching is interfering or beneficial. Particularly as our counterparts tend to be grateful for the interfering help because, let's face it, we're all tired, overwhelmed, and multi-tasking… if someone wants to come in and help me out by doing my thinking for me… I'll roll out the red carpet. The problem is, that's like wanting my personal trainer to lift my weights for me in the hope that I will get stronger and fitter.

So, what is the antidote to the pull towards interfering help when we are coaching?  Over the past couple of years, I have been developing a hypothesis that it's trust.

What would it be like if, as leaders and coaches, we trusted that our counterparts actually have the ability to find their own answers, make their own choices, leverage their own experiences, knowledge, strengths and values, and make their own decisions about how to act in their own lives? And what would we as coaches have to give up to lean into that trust and stop interfering?

On day one of Level 1 certification, we teach the coaching mindset based on the metaphor of a "gold miners' mindset". That is, before you even open your mouth to ask a question, your mindset must be one that believes that the gold lies within the client…. And by inference, it's not within you. Like the I-Ching quote, everyone gets it… except for all the 'but-what-ifs' that we think might prove the exception to the rule:

• But what if they really don't know?

• But what if I really do know?

When I teach advanced listening skills, one of the common practices is to invite people to listen to the 'un-said':

• What is in the "stage directions", guiding but unspoken?

• What is implicit?

• What is inferred?

• What is contextual?

A common example I use (and to understand this, you need to know I am one of those dishwasher-stacking-perfectionist-micro-managers. Send me some love, people; I know I'm not the only one) … is asking 'why did you stack the dishwasher like that?' Although technically, semantically, this is an open and curious question, the unsaid sub-text is critical, judgmental and sanctimonious (some of my best qualities).

Until recently, I have been thinking about this in one direction: How is the coach listening to their counterpart's unsaid? How is the leader listening to their team's unsaid?

But now, I have begun to think about this in relation to what we hear when our coaches (and leaders!) speak to us. What do we infer from the unsaid communication we receive from others? Where do we pick up unspoken and yet real judgement when others speak to us?

• "I'll just do it, it's faster."

• "Let me show you how…"

• "I don't have time to coach my people."

• "Let me tell you what I think you should do here."

• "This is how things have always been done around here."

• "I'll set the direction."

• "Here's what I would do…"

What is unsaid in all of these examples is, "I don't trust you to work it out for yourself." Ability and self-confidence are taken away.

In coaching, every response to the question "What do you think I should do?" that is not met with the answer, "What do you think you should do?" is laden with an inference of "I don't trust you to:"

A) get it right

B) learn how to do it in your way

C) figure out a way that's better than my best thinking

When we tell people what to do, we inherently tell them we don't trust them. We don't believe there is gold in them. Whether the message is coming from the urge to control or to rescue (help and solve), what can be heard is, "I don't trust you".

There is much rhetoric about psychological safety being an essential foundation of functional organisations, but without trust, there is no psychological safety.

And telling (suggesting, offering, interfering) erodes trust.

And when, as coaches, we default to these traps, we are conditioning our coaching counterparts into further believing that if we cannot trust them, then they cannot trust themselves.

I wonder how many of us are coaching leaders who are wrestling with some version of imposter syndrome, whilst we are unintentionally reinforcing that they are, in fact, not good enough and require our interfering help? I wonder how many leaders wish their teams would back themselves, be more creative and innovative, alchemize their potential into delivery, and yet are (unintentionally) perpetuating the symbiotic 'helpful/helpless' dynamic with far-reaching results on culture and performance.

As a coach, you must believe that they really do know and that you really don't. They have their gold. Your gold is not relevant here. Your gold is an interference.

"But what if they really don't know?" you may ask. If you're a coach, not a consultant then you ask the questions to help the client learn, so that they not only figure it out, but figure out how to figure out the next things. Building ability and self-confidence. Building trust.

But what if you really do know?

A. You only know what is relevant for you, not for anyone else.

B. You are probably working in service of the help/rescue/control/solve trap - not in a coaching mindset.

C. You don't actually know anything. Unless your life is perfect, your journey has been ideal, and everyone around you worships the ground you walk on, your advice is flawed, biased, and most likely hypocritical. It's "Do what I say, not what I do."

D. If you have something of value to offer, be a consultant, mentor, or teacher. But in coaching, when you offer your gold, you offer interfering help. You are taking away someone's ability to learn for themselves.

If I'm making this sound easy, it's important to say that what still comes up for me to explore in supervision 20 years into this journey is wrestling with my instincts to rescue, control, help and solve. My urges to 'just' teach one little framework or 'just' suggest one idea… (read: guide people to do things more like I would/did/should).

It has taken me two decades of coaching to understand that coaching is about trust deeply. Coaching as a philosophy is held up by trusting others to work it out for themselves. And as a result, helping them learn that they can trust themselves. To decide. To act. To make mistakes and learn from them. To then begin to trust others, and step into a leadership approach that moves away from command and control and allows everyone to turn their potential into performance.

This has clear benefits for organisations that want to survive and thrive in a complex and changing environment. The research clearly shows that good decision making requires organisational cultures that allow for critical thinking, challenge, and speaking truth to power. This relies on psychological safety, which, as said earlier, requires trust. When we are coaching, every time we suggest (interfere) we subtly reinforce the idea that people shouldn't trust themselves AND that they should outsource their decision-making to someone wiser or of higher status. This erodes the foundation of psychological safety, and it does it in an insidious way, as coaches and leaders don't often notice they are doing this. This has devastating repercussions for organisational reputation and performance (and, for coaching's reputation and performance!) When we offer our interfering help, we unconsciously add to the culture so many of us are trying to change. (And if you're a coach, and you don't think you're doing this, I challenge you to record yourself, ideally on a platform that will give you feedback on your coaching like 'Ovida' and brace yourself for the unflattering mirror that you'll be presented with).

Our role, as coaches, is to ask the questions that allow our counterparts to explore their thinking, question their assumptions, broaden their perspectives, learn how to move through 'I don't know', and after that, ultimately to make their own decisions and, by virtue of this, learn to do this process for themselves; learn to challenge themselves, and then act in accordance with who they are and the results they want and their organisations needs. Repeatedly.

To do this, we need to continue to learn to trust our counterparts, the coaching process, and ourselves as coaching practitioners (with the help of our teachers and supervisors).

Charity Becker is Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership (IECL) 's Head of Coaching & Leader Development and is an experienced coach and coaching supervisor.